Limits to loyalty

Linda and I were high school freshman when Kitty Genovese was murdered by a knife-wielding assailant in Queens, NY. The story of Kitty’s murder made national news – not just because it was a brutal murder but because none of 29 identified witnesses to the 31-minute assault called police. When asked why not, some of the witnesses commented, “I didn’t want to get involved.” The seeming indifference of a large number of bystanders to a shocking crime provoked an episode of national soul-searching.

Are things so different today?

In many urban areas, it’s not hard to find someone wearing a “Stop Snitching” T-shirt. By the way, the term snitching doesn’t mean what it used to. Snitching used to mean testifying against your partner in crime to get a shorter sentence for yourself. Today, however, it is taken to mean cooperating with the police at any time for any reason.

The popular rapper Cameron once was asked, “You mean to say that if you knew a serial killer lived next door, you wouldn’t tell the police?”

“Absolutely not! I might move, though,” he said with a smirk.

To his credit, Cameron – who is admired by many youth – later retracted his comment and apologized.

Hitler was able to take control of Germany and implement a plan of mass murder against Jews, Gypsies and other “undesirables” because too few people spoke out against him.

I suppose every organization, community, and country has its code of loyalty. Taken too far, however, loyalty permits wrongdoing to occur. To stand by passively when someone is being hurt, bullied, or treated unfairly is to stand with the bully instead of with the victim. It is a cowardly way to avoid becoming a victim. Kids learn this kind of behavior from us. (I recall talk show host Bill O’Reilly expressing outrage not that abuse of suspected Iraqi terrorists at Abu Graib prison had occurred, but rather that photographs of the abuse had been circulated to the media.)

Issues of loyalty in the real world are not always cut and dried. One reason we need community policing is to repair the loss of trust between many urban communities and the police departments that serve them. Am I likely to step forward as a witness in a criminal case if I believe that the criminal justice system is unfair to people like me? Police, frustrated at their inability to investigate cases without the community’s cooperation, too often succumb to the temptation to coerce reluctant witnesses. Maybe the case gets closed. Maybe not. Maybe a witness lies to protect himself, thereby putting some innocent person in prison. Meanwhile, respecting “the blue wall of silence,” some good police officers keep quiet to protect their tainted colleagues. In this way, alienation and distrust continue to grow in a vicious cycle.

We need to start somewhere. Maybe we need to start everywhere. In Schenectady, and many other communities, we are trying to break the cycle by engaging young people in a frank dialogue on bystander behavior. On December 8, the Schenectady school district is hosting a panel on the topic of “The Limits to Loyalty” at Martin Luther King Magnet School in the morning, and at Steinmetz Career Leadership Training Academy at noon.

Panelists include members of law enforcement (DA Bob Carney and Sgt. Adriel Linyear of the SPD); crime victims (Steven Mollette, whose daughter was a SCCC student shot to death in front of numerous witnesses who “didn’t see anything;” and Hashim Garrett of the group Breaking the Cycle,who is partially paralyzed from bullet wounds suffered when he was 15 years old); role models for redemption (Shariem Merrit and William Fininen, who once were involved in negative lifestyles but now go to great lengths to teach community youth to avoid making the same mistakes); and a trailblazer (Lechae Rowe, who lived through trauma and tragedy in her own family and stayed loyal to her own aspirations and dreams).

Facilitator for the panel is Marie Verzulli, director of the group Family and Friends of Homicide Victims.

I’ll let you know what kind of reception we get. I really hope to get a feel for where the kids are at.